We’d love memories if they were all good
Never want them to fade like Kodakchrome
Slides sickeningly pink and beige after so
Many years in a box in the attic
Black and white would have proven
Superior though even they yellow on
Their own my sister inherited the family
Album cache if my kids ever want to
Watch me grow up cradle my dog on
The old porch steps they’ll have to
Move quickly grab her some afternoon
While she’s still kicking duplicate those
Images from which I learned of my
Grandparents uncles aunts what they
Wore when they were young the
Paradox being we have pictures of
Them as youngsters young marrieds
Following that the photographs of
Their aging ended up in their family
Albums no one thank God took pix
Of them in their caskets just before
The lid was screwed down excuse me
Except one of a cousin dead early
I remember the flash never saw
The result who’d want a picture
Of cousin Gracie laid out in her
Communion outfit white rosary draped
Through her fingers as if she dropped
Off while praying instead of leukemia
Mourners in typical Polish Catholic
Fashion finished their words
At her kneeler rose turned bent to her mom
Whispered she looks good I never could
Figure what kind of comfort this was
Hearing your beloved child was appealing
In death more than in life I thought
She looked ok for a dead girl who
Wasn’t all that pretty alive
Perhaps I was callow couldn’t see why
They wanted the coffin open
Her looking like she was praying with
Her eyes closed they didn’t apply
The right lipstick it was worse than
Wax at Madame Toussauds young
As I was it seemed more important
That she died than that
Some mortician duded her up
For her last photo a lot of my
Relatives already knew I was
Outside the culture but they
Never let on to my dad or to my mom
Who was there at my birth and knew
I wasn’t adopted
c. J.S.Manista, 2015
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